


Trained

by TheGreatLibraryFangirl (Mazeem)



Category: The Great Library Series - Rachel Caine
Genre: Angst, Gen, I'm just brainstorming in fic form, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:00:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22360729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mazeem/pseuds/TheGreatLibraryFangirl
Summary: "Jess hadn’t intended to have this conversation. Possibly ever. He’d just wanted to assuage his curiosity about Dario’s suspicious skillset. But here they were, anyway. God, he was tired."Dario visits Jess early in his recovery.
Relationships: Jess Brightwell & Dario Santiago
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	Trained

**Author's Note:**

> This is just basically me brainstorming my own theories on how to fit Dario's actions at the end of Sword and Pen into how I view him as a character. Don't take it as set in stone lol. 
> 
> It may not even make sense, it was a bit 'stream of consciousness' in the writing process.

“Where did you learn how to do that?” Jess asked.

Dario didn’t ask for clarification. “You know I’m a bastard.”

Jess sighed and tried to reposition himself a little better on the pillows. His ribs still ached abominably; the muscles there were badly strained from all his coughing. 

“Leaving that aside. I didn’t ask ‘how could you?’. I asked where you learnt how to do it.”

Dario shrugged, and bared his teeth in something that wasn’t a grin. “It’s a skillset appropriate to my status.”

Jess let that telling response slot into place. 

“Dagger skills. Sword skills. And codebreaking - you’re the best code-breaker I know.”

Dario chuckled at that. It sounded genuine. “Firstly, I need that in writing, for my ego. Secondly, you should see Alvaro.” 

That did nothing to dissuade Jess from his train of thought. 

“Did your family want you to join the Library?”

Dario frowned and leaned forwards a little in his seat. His fine ruby earring caught the sun, and Jess’ eye, for a moment. “As it happens, no, they didn’t. My father considered it a waste of time. The family’s full of ex-Scholars. Luckily, I grew out of obeying his wishes years ago.” He flexed his hands in and out of fists, a nervous tic that Jess thought Dario probably hadn’t realised was so noticeable. 

Jess opened his mouth to ask his next question, but felt a tickle at the back of his throat and had to close his eyes for a moment. He didn’t even _need_ to cough, his body was merely following the pattern it had grooved into itself in just those few days. 

“All right?” Dario sounded concerned. Jess opened his eyes to roll them at Dario, and saw with surprise that Dario was holding out a glass of water. The tepid water soothed the tickle nicely. 

“Thanks.”

Dario nodded, then shifted in his seat. “Get on with it, then.”

Jess raised his eyebrows. Dario pointedly raised his right back. 

“You’re chasing something. Get to the bottom of it already. I don’t want Thomas on my back for tiring you out.”

“What were you trained for, Dario?”

He watched Dario’s face closely. Genuine bewilderment, realisation. Amusement.

“Do you think I’m a spy, scrubber?” 

“Do you think you were trained like one?” Jess countered. 

Dario opened his mouth, then closed it again. Tilted his head in acknowledgement. His hair was messier than Jess had ever seen it in an environment where he had access to a barber, and he had to brush it out of his eyes. 

“I see your point.” He shrugged, and to Jess’ surprise, reached into his jacket and pulled out his ornate dagger.

 _You_ are _tired_ , Jess scolded himself, _not to notice the bump of the pommel on the line of his jacket_. 

Dario spun the dagger casually around his finger and watched it.

“I wasn’t being facetious with my first response, you know. I am a nobleman, Jess. I am from a cadet branch of the royal family. Disposable, in a way. There are probably a hundred of us from my generation alone. Ask me to draw a family tree from mine and Ramon’s common ancestor if you want to be bored to sleep one night.”

“Yes, yes, You don’t bleed blue, your highness, I’ve seen enough of your blood to know that.”

Dario smiled - a genuine, unguarded expression which sharpened again almost immediately. “Look at you, using _sangre azul_ like you know what it means.” He twirled the dagger again and sighed. “I was trained to protect my betters, I suppose. A lot of it is very old-fashioned; from the days when the family was smaller and lived on one premises. When, yes, one day you might run into an assassin in the corridor, or discover a plot and ... obtain the information you needed to thwart it.”

Jess scoffed. It hurt his throat. “Don’t sanitise it.”

Dario’s eyes flashed. “Don’t lie to me and say you were comfortable watching me do it.”

“Were you comfortable doing it?”

Jess hadn’t intended to have this conversation. Possibly ever. He’d just wanted to assuage his curiosity about Dario’s suspicious skillset. But here they were, anyway. God, he was tired.

Dario’s expression shifted again to something dreadfully bitter, just for a moment, before he grinned as sharp as a wolf. 

“Yes.”

“No,” Jess snapped back. He did cough then, just once, and felt the aching, tearing jolt of it spread across his entire torso. He grabbed the glass and finished the water. It helped, a little. “Don’t you give me that flashy piratical shit about you being a bad person, as if that explains anything. Not when you’re talking to me.”

The grin slid from Dario’s face and he watched Jess for a moment in silence. His eyes were very dark. Jess wondered if he was remembering the same scenes that Jess was; Dario tearfully begging Jess to hit him under London after he betrayed them all, their planning in Philadelphia; in Castle Raby. Dario’s terrified, horrified face as he hurt Glain to protect that plan, to save them all. 

And yes, Dario’s chilling grin as he’d told the Elite captain exactly what he was going to do.

Dario broke the stare first. “Mm, yes. Brightwell, the smuggler. You don’t exactly have a high moral perch from which to judge, do you?” He flexed his hands again, then made a tiny, aborted movement that Jess thought might have been to hide them in his pockets. 

“I don’t want to _judge_ you!”

Dario swore at him in Spanish. He didn’t want to talk about it,clearly, except that he also clearly _did_ , because there was absolutely nothing stopping him from getting up and leaving. 

“To use your earlier point, I could really do with a nap right now, so get to the fucking point and answer my quest-.” 

“I’m proud of myself!” Dario glared at Jess intently, watching for a reaction. 

Jess didn’t give him one, just raised his eyebrows again. 

Still, Dario squared his shoulders as if anticipating a blow. 

“It needed to be done. We needed the information. And I had the skills to see it done.” He sighed. “It’s not like it’s new. Our planning, and something Santi had me do ... sometimes we need to lie and kill to reach our goal. You understand.”

Jess nodded, slowly. Dario didn’t look finished, and after a few seconds of an intense stare, he continued. 

“I could do it, Jess. I could fix the problem! I don’t get that chance very often. I’m more often the problem.” His voice shook for a moment, then firmed again. “Wolfe thought we’d lost, but we hadn’t. He just couldn’t see it. Too good a man.” 

Jess nodded again. Dario inhaled. It quaked, and tears shone in his eyes. His next words sounded like they were being dragged out of him painfully.

“I am proud of the action. I’m not proud of the ... glee I felt, in doing it. It was revenge for everything, on a perfect target, with a valid reason. It was _wonderful_ to hurt him, that Archivist agent who expressed no guilt, for the pain that we have all suffered. And I know that’s not ... moral. 

“It was black and white as these things could ever be, he was the enemy and it _needed to be done_ , but a good man wouldn’t have _enjoyed_ it.” He bared his teeth and gritted them tightly together.

There it was, spat out with self-disgust. 

“The world needs all sorts,” Jess replied. It was cheesy, but it felt true. “I’m not Wolfe. I don’t expect perfection. I might have done it myself.”

 _Especially if it had been Zara_ , said a cold voice in the back of his mind. 

“ _Fuck_ Wolfe,” Dario snarled, and wrapped his arms tightly around himself. Silence fell. 

Jess yawned, despite himself. The pillow felt very soft underneath him and his entire torso ached in time with his heartbeat. “How many times have you argued this out with him in your head? With all of us?”

Dario shrugged. He blinked and a tear ran down his face.

“Does Khalila know?”

Dario hugged himself even tighter and pulled a sullen face. 

Is that the real conflict? Jess wondered. Not within Dario’s own sense of right and wrong but between what he perceives as the expectations of Khalila? And, to a lesser extent, Wolfe? 

As if Khalila’s hands were clean of blood. As if Wolfe hadn’t chased the Archivist down with revenge in his heart. As if neither of them loved Dario enough to try to understand if there _were_ moral gaps. 

He realised his eyes had slid shut, and forced them open again. Dario was on his feet, and it looked like he had just forced a sob to stop. 

“You should tell her,” Jess mumbled. “And talk to Wolfe.”

Dario swallowed and hardened his expression. “Emotional advice from a half-dead English smuggler. I really have fallen, haven’t I?” There was no bite in his voice. 

Jess’ eyes closed again. 

“Jess.”

At Dario’s low voice, he forced them open again. Saw Dario standing next to him, thumb poised over the underused button that delivered painkilling medication straight into Jess’ veins. Waiting for permission. 

_I don’t need it_ , he thought, and opened his mouth to refuse. But it felt petty to lie about being fine when Dario had torn himself to tears with the truth, so instead he nodded. 

“Night,” he mumbled. 

“It’s afternoon, scrubber.” The button clicked. 

“Go fuck yourself, princeling.” 

Dario snorted. 

The door closed.

Jess drifted off, hoping that he was going to remember enough of this conversation to deal with the fallout that he suspected was coming. 


End file.
